President Biden’s American Families Plan aims to create free community college for all and cover the first two years of costs for low- to middle- income students who attend historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) or minority-serving institutions (MSIs).
Some conservatives have been quick to point to the price tag of Biden’s proposal ($1.8 trillion), arguing that making the first two years of higher education free ultimately limits student choice and could be potentially damaging for HBCU enrollment.
Dr. Robert T. Palmer, department chair and associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Howard University, said that the impact of the Biden proposal varies, depending on the different needs served by each MSI.
“We have to remember that HBCUs are not a monolith,” he said. “The plan right now calls for at least $39 billion to be set aside to subsidize tuition for students wishing to attend HBCUs if the family makes less than $125,000 dollars,” he said, adding that the plan demonstrates “some concerted effort to not do any damage to HBCU enrollment.”
Still, some institutions may be unintentionally impacted, said Dr. Michael J. Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College, a HBCU headquartered in Dallas.
“If you go down a path where you want to make college free, you can hurt, in the short run, a segment of institutions like your smaller regional publics,” he said. “You can hurt many of your HBCUs, because you remove people in the first two years from their base.”
“The true intention,” of the free college movement, said Sorrell, “was to speak to the institutions that were behaving poorly by raising their tuitions in a more aggressive manner.”
